We had a good time albeit a very quick trip that covered a lot of miles in a very short period of time and a new hotel each night. Some would hate the pace in which we travel preferring to stay in one location over several days. Houston's fine and all but we really were not compelled to spend all weekend there - especially since we had both been there before.
I'd never been to the coast of Texas so I knew I wanted to do that and that was the extent of planning before arriving in Houston on Thursday.
Kent and I used an app. called "Local Eats" to find a place to eat dinner on Thursday evening and has some terrific fajitas at El Tiempo 1308 Cantina. I'm not sure if I would go out of my way to find it again with so many option in Houston but the food was pretty good. They served two kinds of salsa with their chips one was served warm which I thought was weird. Between the Local Eats and the Yelp app. we found great food the entire trip.
I got up early on Friday and headed out on what turned out to be a very tough run. I'll write more about that in my week two training update later. Let's just saw humidity and I do not get along!
Kent completed his work and I finished my run and we checked out of the hotel by noon on Friday. Okay it was time to get serious about our weekend plans. The weather had turned and it was overcast with low cloud cover and oh - did I mention, humid! Since we knew we wanted to make it to the coast we looked up the weather for both Galveston and Corpus Christi - enough said, we followed the better weather track and decided to make hotel reservations in Corpus Christi.
One of my co-workers had lived in Port Aransas, Texas so we decided to head to Corpus via Port Aransas. It's a Xxxx hour drive between Houston and Corpus Christi and since we had plenty if time and enjoy road trips we decided to forgo the Interstate and take back roads that went along the coast as much as possible. Texas is very beautiful in the spring. There were wildflowers everywhere! This was pretty much true the entire weekend. One our way to Port Aransas we stopped off at a National Historic Site - The Fulton Mansion. It was closed but the grounds were nice and best of all the grounds/gardens were maintained by the local Master Gardeners.
From there we took a ferry across to Port Aransas. Not much to Port Aransas - it's had not to wonder why people choose to live in the path of Hurricanes especially since Ike was through this area less than two years ago. I'll have to ask Georgia (my co-worker) about that. We drove out to the beach took a few pictures went for a short walk and headed to Corpus Christi. Upon arrival we checked right into the hotel and then drove around before settling on a place for dinner. We found an Italian place to eat and had a wonderful dinner - the mussel appetizer was especially delicious. Mamma Mia's has been in operation in Corpus for over 18 years! It was obvious upon arrival that there were many local "regulars" there for dinner - always a good sign. The owner Marino came over and asked where we were from so we chatted for awhile and I showed him how we found his restaurant on Yelp. Check it out if you find yourself in Corpus and hankering for a great meal and an experience all in one! Look for Mario - he'll be the one with the pipe although he's not smoking anything!
We found out there was a minor league baseball game going on in town that evening at Whataburger Field (loved the name of the field) - home of the Corpus Christi Hooks. Because it was such a nice warm evening we decided to take in a baseball game. It was the perfect way to end the day. Very relaxing and as an added bonus a lot of really cute Texan baseball fan eye candy to keep one occupied during the slow times in the game!
We got up the next day and decided to once again follow the best weather and head north to San Antonio. I'd been to San Antonio several years ago for a conference and had a real good time. The drive between Corpus Christi and San Antonio was very pretty with all the wildflowers in full bloom.
We went to the Market and the local Farmer Market in San Antonio and checked out the river walk before heading out in hopes of making it to Austin in time for lunch. Once we made it to San Antonio, Austin was a no brainier.
We had been in Austin the previous June (previous blog post on Austin) for the Austin Pride Parade (parade queen remember) and had such a great time we just had to return. There is just something about Austin that makes you feel right at home upon arrival. Kent and I both decided we could easily become Longhorn fans!
We made it in town early enough to make it to their Farmers Market and found out that the Spring Festival was going on so we walked to the festival and checked out the street vendors. I love happening upon local festivals while traveling - this was definitely a bonus!
Best meal of the trip was had in Austin. We were looking for a sandwich shop or local deli and on Yelp found Food Heads. It was just the right kinda place we were looking for - local vibe, busy but not over crowed, fun environment and most importantly - great food! We already know where we will be eating lunch next time we are in Austin.
On the way out of town Kent found a local Barbershop and did what he likes to do while we travel - got a haircut. The shop - Floyd's Barbershop reminded me a lot of Rudy's barbershop in Seattle.
Time for the last leg of our trip. We needed to be back in Houston to catch our flight home the next morning so we headed in that general direction. Once we got closer and realized we had the time we decided to head down to Galveston for dinner before calling it a night.
Again upon arriving in Galveston I could not help wonder about the hurricane thing again. You could see that although things looked pretty close to being back to normal they were still recovering from Ike - a year and a half ago! We drove out to the drive along the coast and around town before settling on a place for dinner - another excellent meal - delicious warm goat cheese salad!
Another local place - they had a marker inside that showed how high the water line during hurricane Ike - it was - right were I was standing in Mosquito Cafe the water was over 6 feet deep - the place is not even near the coast! Price you pay for having a business on an island in an active hurricane zone. The downtown is full of historic buildings and looked like a place I would return for a day visit sometime in the future.
So there you have it - our Texan whirlwind trip. For those of you that have followed me long enough you are aware of Kent and my geeky quirks. One is to map out all our driving trips on a map - this one looks pretty good on the map!
In the spirit of having just been in Texas - see ya'll later!
Jim
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Wow I'm tired! doing these voyaristic journey's with you and kent via your blog is exciting, but enough to tire this old gal to the bone! Happy you had such a good time. Barbara Rylie was born in Corpis Christi, and has two or three brothers that live there as well as neices and nephews.
ReplyDeleteWow, your map is cool... you have covered a lot of the US. I have heard that Austin is a lot like Seattle minus the rain. And now after reading your post...my tummy is hungry :)
ReplyDeleteNice trip, but I have to disagree with you about Port Aransas. If you think there is "not much to Port Aransas", maybe you just didn't go to the beach. PortA is not about the town, it's all about the beach.
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